A Hurricane Cocktail to Toast Irene

This might be a bit premature — and possibly in bad taste if Irene ends up doing a lot of damage — but in light of Hurricane Irene, which is barreling up the East Coast as I write this, I’ve had a couple of people ask me for a cocktail recipe for a Hurricane.

Anyone who’s ever been to New Orleans has probably had a Hurricane. It’s the house drink at Pat O’s — Pat O’Brien’s, the very well known and popular French Quarter bar.

Legend has it (doesn’t legend always have it when it comes to cocktails?) that when Pat O’s opened just after prohibition, whiskey was very hard to come by. In order to get one bottle of whiskey, you had to buy an entire case of rum. So how to get rid of the rum? A house drink, naturally. Pat O’s drink was originally made with passion fruit syrup, which is a dull orange color, so who knows when or how it became the bright red color you see in the photos above. Pat O’s uses a mix today, and surely it has grenadine in it.

Pat O’s is also famous for introducing the Hurricane glass, named because it’s shaped like a hurricane lamp. (Speaking of hurricane lamps, does everyone have their candles and kerosene ready?)

There are other versions of the Hurricane’s history. (Aren’t there always other versions when it comes to cocktails?) In his book, “The Craft of the Cocktail,” Dale DeGroff writes that the drink was made famous by Pat O’Brien’s, but that according to Brian Rea, the author of Brian’s Booze Guide and The Modern Bartender’s Guide, the rum-based Hurricane first appeared at the 1939 World’s Fair in Queens — at the Hurricane Bar. DeGroff says the Hurricane cocktail recipe does not appear in the 1937 Famous Drinks of New Orleans by Stanley Clisby Arthur.

For our Hurricane (Irene), I’ll stick with the rum versions. I have four versions — all from actual books, not cobbled off the Internet: “Craft of the Cocktail” (which has the most ingredients), “American Bar,” “Mr. Boston’s Platinum Edition” and “The Ultimate A-to-Z Bar Guide,” which appears to have the simplest recipe.

Yes, I have quite the cocktail library. And quite the collection of booze, too. It won’t be a problem for me to make Hurricanes on the fly. But should you be needing Passion Fruit Syrup (almost all the recipes call for it), Torani makes it. Maybe you can get it at specialty stores? Or go online. (Or go crazy and make your own. Here’s a recipe from Epicurious.com.) If you want to use passion fruit juice (which is terrific in smoothies, by the way, and I have a nice rum-jalapeno drink you can make with it later), you’ll find it at Latin grocery stores under the name of maracuya, the Spanish word for passion fruit. Ceres makes it, too, and I’ve seen that at Whole Foods and other gourmet markets.

And PS: you don’t have to go out and buy hurricane glasses. A pint glass works just fine. And so does a big wine glass.

Shake all ingredients with ice and strain into a hurricane glass filled with ice. Garnish with fresh tropical fruit. Variation: Try this drink by muddling a piece of orange, a piece of lime and a chunk of pineapple in the mixing glass with the lime ice and Galliano. Add the rest of the ingredientes and shake.

Liz Johnson is the food editor of The Journal News and LoHud.com, for which she's won awards from the New York News Publishers Association, the Association of Food Journalists and the Associated Press. She lives in Nyack with her husband and daughter on a tiny suburban lot they call their farm — with fruit trees, an herb garden, and a yardful of lettuce, tomatoes, onions, shallots, cucumbers, zucchini, radishes, cabbage, peppers, Brussels sprouts and carrots and four big blueberry bushes.

1 Comment

Liz- I ran into those guys just moments after that photo of them sucking on Hurricanes was taken. They are all actually some of the top cocktail writers and bartenders from around the world, and this photo was taken during the annual Tales of the Cocktail, July 2008 in NOLA. That’s Blair Reynolds of Portland, OR in the safari hat, Jay Hepburn from England to his left, and the other names I’m blanking on. The photo was from a blog post Blair wrote about the worst drinks on Bourbon St.http://okolemaluna.com/the-worst-drinks-on-bourbon-street/